In the USA, are we still doing considerable R&D for future markets? 1

[Tobalcane]

In the USA, are we still doing considerable R&D for future markets? I have gotten into a debate with a fellow engineer and he feels that the US still does a lot of R&D for future markets and that is our edge over the third world countries. I feel that we have become complacent or over cautions due to the dot com bust and thus doing considerably less R&D since the 1990s. This is another reason that we are seeing less work in the USA. With out R&D for future markets, we are not on the cutting edge on technology that the engineers in the USA can monopolize until other countries can duplicate it.

What is your take on R&D in the US?


Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

 

[rerig]

My opinion.
R&D was funded by companies doing work for the Government on a "cost plus" basis. Now that companies must fund R&D themselves, and with Bean Counters in charge, every R&D project must show potential profit or it won't be funded.
Most Far East countries used Reverse Engineering to get up to speed, but now are investing in R&D. They saw how we got to where we are. Where as, we have decided, if we can't be guarantied of a profit "Up Front", we aren't going to spend the money.
This is a gross generality...but that is how it looks to me.

 

[Maui]

My belief is that the R&D efforts of companies have diminished in the US over the course of the last three years. I believe that this is true because it has happened in my own company. The recession that dragged out until the beginning of this year took a heavy toll on industrial research programs. When markets tighten and companies begin to struggle financially, one of the first things that usually gets the axe is overhead. And the research department is nothing but overhead to the corporation because they don't manufacture anything. The R&D department suffers cuts to reduce costs, and fewer workers cannot maintain the same pace and slower progress is made, or no new products are developed. If the company does not have better products to offer or advancements to introduce into the marketplace, then they will be bypassed by the competition and their sales will deteriorate even more. As income is reduced, cuts are made in several other areas of their business in order to remain afloat. If the downturn in the economy lasts long enough, this scenario generates a downward cycle from which the company may never recover. Under these circumstances, Darwin's theory also applies to businesses - survival of the fittest.


Maui

 

[friartuck]

I live in the UK and we have the same problem. Labour costs are too high and so work and production goes abroad.

R&D is expensive unless you are a truly rich concern. The far east seem to have a monopoly on R&D. They make nigh on perfect AC equipment. We use Japanese equipment becaues we know how good it is. Nearly all the TV's are from the orient. So are our cars.

They have a great work ethic.

We on the other hand bicker amongst ourselves, spend lots of time talking up wages, working conditions and so on. We shoot ourselves in the feet.

A company I used to work for adopted a lot of the japenese ways and production and quality soared. But there are not too many like that.

We have to re-think or become dinosaurs.

As an engineer I grew up using Trane and Lennox AC equipment. I also used some US produced ventilation fans, but when you look at the market now, the build quality is much better from Japan than anywhere.

We also had a company called Dyson, who produced the worlds first bagless vacuum. Where is it made now?? Not in England, thats for sure.

So whats the answer?

Even when we develop something it gets shipped to a low cost labour market.

Only government intervention can tackle this. I'm not saying stop it, because some of these countries are developing and need the help..but so do we....so there has to be a reasonable balance.

So come on Mr Blair (or Mr Bush) lets see some strategic thinking here or we'll get left well behind.



Friar Tuck of Sherwood

 

[mbph]

I don't think there's a shortage of research in this country. I can't imagine Japan or any other country even coming close to the amount of research done at our universities and all the different firms and groups out there. For just about every aspect of our society--medical, social, science, arts--there's a way to get money from government agencies, charities, investmennt firms, if you know how and who to ask.

Just like anything else there's competition for research dollars and the money goes to those that know how to make great proposals and know what the grantor wants to hear.

Research can also be about what's hot. I don't know this for a fact but I bet right now there's a big bucket of research money out there for homeland defense.

I don't think there's much government interest in funding a research project on making an air conditioner run one degree cooler. On the other hand I bet there's a research proposal writer out there crafty enough to get it funded.

If you ask me there's more than enough research happening. I think there's a reluctance to understand and use other people's research and most researchers love their labs and have little interest in application.

 

[liberty]

Instead of cost-plus fixed-fee, it seems to me most of the government-funded R&D is in a matching funds format, especially for technology with commercial potential such as fuel cells or cancer treatment. (I work on a cost-plus contract but it is for something very specific that has absolutely no commercial value.)

For a typical matching funds example, Congress offers $7mil to a company willing to fund the remaining $15mil to develop a technology, find a cure, etc. This shuts out the little guy with a creative idea, in favor of an established powerhouse who will win the contract on current position in the industry, and just throw brute force (large-scale, old-paradigm technology) at the problem. Such an approach is problematic because it impedes the process of allowing new paradigms to emerge, which are often introduced by people regarded by the affected industry as outsiders.

Politics enable this stagnation. For example, the USDA is considering restructuring the carb-heavy food pyramid in light of recent revelations about low-carb diets. As you can imagine, every established high-carb interest is very active in getting their commodity (potatoes, milk, etc.) somehow built into the new food pyramid. The focus is on supporting the existing food paradigm, not improving dietary health information. Politics is bad for innovation, even in the pork belly guise of government-funded research, and unfortunately the US is pretty well bogged-down with special-interest politics.

Government funding aside, western concepts of intellectual property and fair use also provide obstacles to innovation in the free market. In the Asian economy there is less focus on or enforcement of copyright. As mentioned above, reverse-engineering was an accepted practice for years in Asia, and now they are just discovering better ways of doing the things we've been doing the same way for too long. Corporations there can readily fund their own R&D, without being sucked dry or torn down by armies of friendly and hostile patent attorneys.

 

[davefitz]

One way to obtain a quantitative indicator of research is to tally the number of positions advertised for researchers in classified ads, and also to tally the number of technical papers presented at conferences. I am sure such a method is used by intelligence agencies to gauge the technical strength of different countries as well as to determine the direction of research interests.

In the US, there has been a shift from company funded proprietary research to funding some research at universities and research institutes. Also, a significant grey-matter shift has occurred by the adoption of the PC and itnernet technologies; instead of all similar companies hiring an expert in a particular application , one can often find a specific solution to a problem is publically available in software form , so the same solution can be implemented by a large number of engineers with BS degrees and not require a large number of PhD's to reinvent the wheel 8 ways from sunday.

 

[corus]

Friartuck makes some valid points, though he/she is really referring to manufacturing. As they say, the products are actually developed in the UK, it's only the question of manufacturing costs that cause them to be built abroad (as happens in the USA going by the various comments that are made elsewhere). The research is obviously occuring in the UK and that remains the advantage over the low cost producing countries. The problems of keeping manufacturing within the country are another matter.

Research and development is vital for any company if it has any long term strategy. The problem with research is that the benefits are not always apparent to a company that largely focuses on short term gains, and is sadly the area that is likely to face cuts if no benefits can be seen. It's a matter of qualifying your research into those of longer term strategy and those that can have a short term gain, and showing the probablility of such benefits weighed against the cost. If research in the UK (or the USA) is happening less these days then the long term viability of any company will rapidly diminish.

PS Dyson sucks

corus

 

[DrillerNic]

In the oil industry, the major R&D effort was moved onto the service companies by the majors about 10 years ago, but they remain major sponsors of basic reasearch in various universities around the world (i.e. my old university, Imperial College, gives a full bursary to every single UK MSc Petroleum Engineering student, funded by different oil cos. and industry groups; many earth science professorships in the UK are the BP chair of this or the Shell chair of that).

I don't know where Halliburton, Baker etc do their research, but when I was at Schlumberger they had very large research facilites in the USA, Cambridge and Moscow.

There is a lot of general engineering & science reasearch being done in the UK, what is failing is the commercialisation of that research.

 

[ScottyUK]

In the power industry the privatisation and subsequent breakup of the generation, transmission and distribution operations has effectively killed off much of the pure research in the UK.

Many of the techniques which are commonplace in todays electricity industry were born out of research in the 1970's and 80's conducted by the CEGB. The expertise of the researchers of yesteryear is being lost forever as these people grow old and retire. Engineers of later generations are unlikely to ever develop the depth of specialist knowledge to be able to carry out research, because their employers have cut workforces to the bare minimum and the engineering staff are expected to be a jack of all trades.

As a nation, we collectively rely on consultants who gained their experience in the days when large-scale R&D was still taking place, but many of us wonder how these experts can be replaced: where will their replacements gain the level of knowledge? It is almost to late to recover the situation; in ten years time the opportunity will have passed forever.



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